Warning Shadows (1923)
"Schatten - Eine nächtliche Halluzination" (original title)

During a dinner, given by a wealthy baron and his wive, attended by four of her suitors in a 19th century German manor, a shadow-player rescues the marriage by giving all the guests a ... See full summary »

Director:

Arthur Robison

Writers:

Arthur Robison, Rudolf Schneider

Stars:

Alexander Granach, Max Gülstorff, Lilli Herder

Cast

Credited cast:
Alexander Granach	...	Shadowplayer
Max Gülstorff	...	2. Kavalier
Lilli Herder	...	Dienstmaedchen
Rudolf Klein-Rogge
Fritz Kortner	...	The count
Karl Platen	...	2. Diener
Fritz Rasp	...	Diener
Eugen Rex	...	A servant
Ferdinand von Alten	...	3. Kavalier
Gustav von Wangenheim	...	Her lover
Ruth Weyher	...	His wife

Storyline

During a dinner, given by a wealthy baron and his wive, attended by four of her suitors in a 19th century German manor, a shadow-player rescues the marriage by giving all the guests a vision what might happen tonight if the baron stays jealous and the suitors do not reduce their advances towards his beautiful wife. Or was it a vision ?

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Plot Keywords:

suitor | mirror | musician | rope | jealousy | 

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Genres:

Drama | Fantasy | Horror

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Certificate:

Unrated

Details

Country:

Germany

Language:

German

Release Date:

27 April 1925 (Finland)

Also Known As:

Warning Shadows

Company Credits

Production Co:

PAN Film, Pan-Film

Technical Specs

Runtime:

90 min

Sound Mix:

Silent

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Connections

Featured in Die Sprache der Schatten - Murnau: Die frühen Jahre und Nosferatu (2007)

User Reviews

Shadow play

I shudder to think what might have been of the German school if Caligari and Nosferatu had been among the lost films. There's just not a whole lot that has reached us from this movement, much less truly great works. Recently restored by the Murnau foundation, this is meant to be one of the most evocative ones, a great title we had been missing.

Most of it passes with little notice, a night of erotic angst, rivalry and a marriage falling apart with the lavish mansion of a baron as the stage of the theater. The prospective lovers feign and thrust, eventually really thrust; we get to see this in shadows. Shadows, a nocturnal hallucination as the title goes. It's the arrival of a shadow-player that is the most intriguing here. Oh, eventually his magick tricks were all serving a benign purpose, domestic bliss is salvaged from desire most foul, the soul restored into proper order.

The trick is that he gives the parties involved a vision of what might unfold, the dangers involved. His small audience wakes up from the cinematic illusion dazzled, baffled, rubbing their eyes with disbelief. And we pull further back in the final shot to see curtains falling on this level that we experienced as reality.

Is everything inside the nested story so artificial because it was the times still inflected by theater, or because the shadow play is inherently artificial? Is the shadow player the protagonist himself, made from his mirrored image, and so conjuring for himself a wish-fulfillment illusion where everything is made alright?

If you were looking to come to this for German expressionism, you might want to reconsider. There is a great shot of the illusionist pushing back, elongating the shadows of his players. But it's serving and is part of the great self-referential tradition of cinema, films about the illusion of watching films.